Peter Higgs & François Englert win Nobel Prize for Physics

8 October 2013

Peter Higgs and François Englert have won the 2013 Nobel
Prize for Physics, for their work in the 1960s that led to the concept of a mass-giving particle now known as the Higgs Boson.

Early in his career, Peter Higgs undertook a year-long ICI Research Fellowship at UCL. He later became a temporary lecturer in mathematics at UCL, leaving in 1960 to
return to the University
of Edinburgh – where he
remains to this day, now as Emeritus Professor of particle physics.

UCL also awarded Peter Higgs an honorary doctorate of science in 2010.

The Royal
Swedish Academy
awarded the prize for “the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that
contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles,
and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted
fundamental particle by the Atlas and CMS experiments at Cern’s Large Hadron
Collider.”

UCL High Energy Physics is heavily involved in the Atlas experiment. UCL
staff and PhD students are members of the collaboration, and data from the experiment
has even been used in undergraduate projects.

Professor Jon Butterworth, Head of UCL Physics & Astronomy and member of
the Atlas experiment said: “François Englert and Peter Higgs certainly deserve
this. I, and the rest of Atlas, congratulate them wholeheartedly – and I hope
Professor Higgs is enjoying his caravan holiday too!

The discovery of a Higgs Boson, showing that the theoretical ideas are manifested in the real world, was thanks to the work of many thousands. There are 3,000 or so people on Atlas, a similar number on CMS, and hundreds who worked on the LHC.

Professor Jon Butterworth

“But (and there is a “but”) prizes only give one view of how science
is done. They encourage the idea that the typical manner of progress in science
is the breakthrough of a lone genius. In reality, while lone geniuses and
breakthroughs do occur, incremental progress and collaboration are more
important in increasing our understanding of nature. Even the theory
breakthrough behind this prize required a body of incrementally acquired
knowledge to which many contributed.

“The discovery of a Higgs Boson, showing that the theoretical ideas are
manifested in the real world, was thanks to the work of many thousands. There
are 3,000 or so people on Atlas, a similar number on CMS and hundreds who
worked on the LHC. While the citation gives handsome credit for all this, part
of me still wishes the prizes could have acknowledged it too.”